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It’s Complicated: Facebook’s History of Tracking You

For years people have noticed a funny thing about Facebook’s ubiquitous Like button. It has been sending data to Facebook tracking the sites you visit. Each time details of the tracking were revealed, Facebook promised that it wasn’t using the data for any commercial purposes.

No longer. Last week, Facebook announced it will start using its Like button and similar tools to track people across the Internet for advertising purposes.

April 21, 2010 – Facebook introduces the “Like” button in 2010 at its F8 developer conference. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg declares that it will be “the most transformative thing we’ve ever done for the Web.”

He says his goal is to encourage a Web where all products and services use people’s real identity. He suggests, in fact, that creating a personally identifiable web experience could be divine: “When you go to heaven, all of your friends are all there and everything is just the way you want it to be,” he says. “Together, lets build a world that is that good.”